


Our Hungers Appeased

by MercyBuckets



Category: The Expanse (TV), The Expanse Series - James S. A. Corey
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Background Naomi/Holden, Caliban's War Spoilers, Canon Character of Color, Canon-Typical Violence, Cultural Differences, Food, Gen, Male-Female Friendship, Minor Spoilers for Later Books, Post-Season/Series 02, Slice of Life, Team Bonding, Team as Family, canon fusion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-11
Updated: 2017-12-11
Packaged: 2019-02-13 10:44:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12982356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MercyBuckets/pseuds/MercyBuckets
Summary: Alex, Bobbie, and the search for best BBQ in the Sol System.





	Our Hungers Appeased

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Steel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Steel/gifts).



> For Steel feat. Bobbie and Alex friendship, strong bonds of friendship, and fluff for days. 
> 
> Canon: This a bit of a canon fusion between the books and the show. Primary canon is show, post season 2 finale with details from the books incorporated (Spoilers for Caliban’s War and minor detail spoilers through Nemesis Games but only in terms of backstory, nothing plot related). 
> 
> Title is from the Hozier song 'In a Week'
> 
> Many thanks to Isis for beta reading. This story wouldn't have been the same without her!

It’s Holden’s fault for being a dumbass— but when it comes down to it, what isn’t?

It starts because Naomi makes that awful fried bug thing for dinner and Alex puts the last of his  Q-Sauce from his last trip home on it, in a perfectly reasonable effort to save his taste buds.

Naomi doesn’t even look up. ‘You had better not be covering up all my hard work with your Martian sauce, Alex Kamal.’

‘Hard work, pah,’ teases Alex. ‘I don’t know why you insist on cooking everything to death Naomi.’

‘Wouldn’t want to eat it wiggling,’ says Amos pragmatically.

Naomi swats the back of Alex’s head. ‘See if I cook for your ungrateful ass again.’ 

Alex is saved from responding by Bobbie who appears, hair loose and arms bare, in the doorway of the mess.

‘What’s for dinner?’ she asks spooning a heaping pile onto her plate without waiting for a response. Then seeing Alex’s plate she asks, ‘Is that Q-Sauce?’

‘See, says Alex ‘Bobbie understands me.’

‘It’s like drinking vinegar straight ,’ mutters Naomi.

Bobbie, reaches over and snags a sauce-covered lump with her fingers.

‘Mine,’ scolds Alex as Amos reaches to do the same.

‘What the fuck kind of Q-Sauce is this?’ demands Bobbie. She sounds offended. ‘It’s too thin!’

‘Ha!’ says Naomi.

‘What,’ says Holden. In typical fashion he’s emerged from his bunk just in time to catch the lates drama.  

‘Alex’s Q-Sauce is fake,’ announces Bobbie.

‘I just want to eat my food without being _harassed_ ,’ says Alex.

‘I think they should probably throw-down,’ says Amos. He looks far too pleased with the situation.

‘Q-Sauce?’ asks Holden, and they should have seen that coming because what would an Earther who grew up in _Montana_ know about anything.

‘You don’t have Q-Sauce on Earth?’ asks Bobbie. She sounds scandalized, like she can’t imagine that anyone, even Earthers, would be so backwards as to not have _Q-Sauce_.

‘What does it taste like?’ asks Holden.

‘Sour,’ says Alex. ‘Like vinegar and spice.’

‘Thick,’ says Bobbie at the same time. ‘Like _molas_ and fire.’

‘Oh for meat?’ says Holden even though no one’s paying attention to him. Everyone is watching Alex and Bobbie face off. ‘We have that. You cook it for a really long time until it’s burnt and then you cut it up real small and eat it with cold potatoes.’

‘Makes the tank grown stuff taste almost real,’ says Bobbie wistfully.

‘Who can afford meat these days,’ says Alex. ‘And who the fuck puts _molas_ in Q-Sauce?’

‘Everyone’ says Bobbie. ‘At least in Londres Nova. Otherwise it just runs right off. You gotta make it sticky.’

‘You’re telling me, you got actual meat and you wanna _cover it up_ so you can’t taste it anymore?’ Alex asks incredulously. Naomi looks similarly skeptical.

‘It mixes together with the drippings,’ says Bobbie defensively. ‘How do you do it?’

Alex’s mind drifts back to his childhood. ‘We’d roast a whole goat over an open flame out in field and you could eat off that for a month.’

‘Oh,’ says Holden suddenly. ‘Q-Sauce! Like barbecue!’

‘Bless you,’ says Naomi smirking.

‘No it’s—’ He cuts himself off when he realises that she’s teasing him. ‘Does the Belt have that? Protein cooked over a flame for hours and hours?’

‘Not really,’ she says slowly. ‘There’s a protein thing that you cook and then you put the dish in the heat vent to make it taste smoky. It’s the kind of thing everyone’s _matma_ makes for special occasions. But nothing like Mars and their weird obsession with Q-Sauce. I didn’t realize there were different kinds.’

‘There’s only one _right_ kind!’ says Alex.

‘And your’s ain’t it!’ says Bobbie.

‘I bet there’s even more,’ says Holden. ‘There’s a ton on Earth.’

‘Don’t matter if they’re all wrong,’ says Alex.

‘Don’t see how _food_ can be wrong,’ says Amos. But of course he would eat the hull of a ship if he was hungry.

‘We should keep an eye out,’ says Holden. ‘Might be tasty. There’s nothing like a taste of home.’

Alex huffs. Bobbie glares at him.

‘Fine, whatever,’ they say finally, words overlapping.

* * *

Next time they refuel — at Kada station, near the edge of the Belt — Alex makes a beeline for the Martian quarter intent on getting more Q-Sauce. It’s hard to find the good stuff off-planet and it costs a pretty penny but they make good money these days. If he’s also feeling a little defensive about it, so what? There’s no one here to tattle on him. Except that when he gets to the little store, Bobbie is already walking out of it.

‘They don’t have it,’ she says. ‘Mine or yours.’

‘Course they don’t,’ mutters Alex wondering how she beat him here. He shouldn’t. She’s a marine. What can’t she do?

‘You know I haven’t had Q-Sauce in months, hadn’t even thought about it, and now it’s all I want,’ says Bobbie.

She’s clearly going somewhere with this even if Alex can’t quite see where yet. ‘There’s not many ties to home out here,’ he says neutrally, mostly to see what she does. He doesn’t know her very well. She’s been bunking with them for months now but she plays her cards close to the chest. Well, she _is_ a marine.

Bobbie looks away.

‘It’s different now,’ she says. Then abruptly she asks, ‘How often do you go h— back?’

It hits him all of a sudden. He remembers Avasarala telling them when she dropped Bobbie into their laps that at least someone could ‘make use of the ace in the fucking hole.’ He knows that those UN goons will never okay Bobbie for ops. She can’t go back to Mars and Earth— Avasarala notwithstanding—  won’t let her fight.

‘Not often,’ he says keeping the revelation off his face. If there’s one thing living with Holden has taught him, it’s how to keep a poker face. ‘Don’t have much to go back for. My family’s all out here.’

She nods understanding that he means the _Roci_. Mars doesn’t mean the same things to him as it does to her. He can miss it but he could never go back for good.

She looks at him for a long time, long enough that her neck probably aches from the angle before finally saying, ‘We should probably get back.’

They walk back to the ship in comfortable silence. Silence that is broken by Holden’s cheerful shout as they duck into the cargo bay.

‘Guess what Amos found!’

‘His brain?’ asks Bobbie.

‘Fuck off,’ says Amos, but it’s clearly a good-natured response

‘There was a couple from from Innis Deep roasting kabobs with some sort of fruit and _molas_ sauce,’ says Naomi before Holden can draw it out any longer.

‘With real fire!’ says Holden.

Naomi shrugs. ‘He’s easily amused.’

For some reason, something inside Alex clenches hard at that. He misses home more than ever.

Beside him, Bobbie looks stricken, but in a happy way if that’s even possible.

‘Well let’s eat,’ she says like she’s wondering why they’re all still standing around talking about it.

‘Let’s eat,’ echos Alex.

* * *

After that it becomes a sort of game of who can find the smoke and fire roasted protein first. Every place they go has something different.

 

On Beru station, they try white protein with a thick gloppy white sauce that the locals try to tell them is Q-Sauce. Bobbie and Alex are both appalled.

‘At least we can both agree that Q-Sauce isn’t _white_ ,’ declares Bobbie.

Alex nods emphatically.

‘I thought it was pretty good,’ says Holden, who wouldn’t know good food if it slapped him upside the head.

 

At Tycho Station, after a particularly good transport run, Bobbie disappears for a few hours and returns with fragrant sticks of actual meat, crusted black on the outside.

‘Tank grown,’ she hastens to add, but Amos is already stuffing his face.

Alex takes a bite of the one she hands him. It’s a slow kind of spicy, like standing in the engine room until it gets so hot you _have_ to move. He takes a hasty bite of the fluffy bread she's pressed into his other hand.

‘It sneaks up on you,’ wheezes Holden, face red and eyes watering.

‘I _love_ it!’ says Naomi. ‘Where did you get it? Can we make it?’

  


Neither Naomi nor Alex likes the sticky sweet sauce on the crispy grubs from Duga Eight.

‘I never thought I’d see the day when you turn your nose up at bugs,’ teases Amos.

‘It tastes like _molas_ from a spoon,’ says Naomi.

Holden shugs, saying, ‘The cook told me there was coffee in it.’

‘I’ll eat your portion,’ says Bobbie to Naomi.

Amos reaches for Alex’s bowl. ‘I’ll have yours.’

‘Keep your grubby hands away from my food,’ says Alex.

‘Ha,’ says Holden. ‘That was a pun.’

 

They don’t talk about the protein on Fidelis Nine. Alex is pretty sure his guts are still on the bathroom floor.

 

In Kinsu, near Medina on Ceres, Amos gets them little bowls filled with thin slices of salty spicy protein served with a sticky rice porridge.

‘We had something like this when I was young,’ says Naomi. ‘It’s a good way to make the protein last.’

‘You gonna eat that?’ Amos asks, noticing Alex’s half full bowl.

Alex pushes it over. ‘You know what, knock yourself out.’

* * *

They’re having a pretty good run— no protomolecule sightings and Holden hasn’t incited any accidental civil wars. Unfortunately, that all burns up in the drive plume when Alex goes out to buy a new belt for the grav generator and is rudely _shot_ by some asshole in a dumb hat.

‘That hat was dumb as shit,’ Alex wheezes.

‘Shut your damn mouth so Amos can see how bad it is,’ orders Naomi.

She looks a little frantic and in some distant part of himself that isn’t freaking out Alex feels bad, because he knows she hates problems she can’t fix.

‘That hat was dumber than Miller’s hat.’ Apparently his mouth is still stuck on that.

His whole upper body feels like it’s falling into a hole, like his torso is getting sucked out into space but his feet are stuck in mag-boots.

‘Miller’s hat had a certain charm to it,’ says Holden somewhere outside of Alex’s vision.

He sounds like he might be about to cry. Probably because he hates talking about Miller, and because he also hates problems he can’t fix.

‘The good news is it missed the artery,’ says Amos. ‘Otherwise you’d be dead by now. Reconstruction is gonna hurt like a bitch though.’

‘Okay,’ says Alex feeling calmer about that he probably should. He must be on the good drugs.

‘ _Taki_ _lik pasheng_!’ says Naomi with feeling.

‘He gonna live?’ asks Bobbie. She pokes her head in like she’s not quite sure if she’s intruding but she doesn’t want to look unsure.

‘ _Ya,_ ’ says Naomi. Her eyes never leave Alex.

‘I broke the fucker’s arm anyway,’ says Bobbie.

Amos breaks into a grin and taps his heart.

* * *

Amos wasn’t wrong; the reconstruction does hurt like a bitch. Luckily, Alex is able to spend most of it unconscious under the influence of the MCR army’s best leftover drugs. When he wakes up, he’s unexpectedly alone and his first thought is that something must be wrong. In his defense, he might still be under the influence when he staggers to his feet and yanks out the wires and sensors monitoring him.

He moves slowly down the corridors in case the ship has been boarded by UN goons, or MCR goons, or OPA goons ... or some imposible protomolecule goons. With Holden as their captain, anything is possible. He makes it all the way to the mess without encountering anyone only to round the corner to find Bobbie sitting on the floor surrounded by shards of glass.

‘Bobbie? What is—’ Then he stops looking the broken remains of the solar lamp on the wall, and looks at Bobbie’s hands — and changes his question. ‘What are you doing to my baby?’

‘Trying to make a fire,’ she says, rolling her eyes. ‘You weren’t supposed to wake up for another three hours.’

‘You do realise that there are safety measures in place, specifically to prevent fires on ships right?’ says Alex. ‘Wait are those _live_?’

‘These?’ asks Bobbie, gently shaking the wires in her hands. ‘Yeah, how else would I start a fire?’

‘Are we under attack?’ asks Alex faintly.

‘ _Soyá_ no,’ says Bobbie evidently having picked up the expression from Naomi.

‘Why the hell else would you want to start a fire?’

‘To cook with,’ she says like it should be obvious.

‘To cook with,’ repeats Alex.

‘It was supposed to be a surprise.’ She holds up a vacuum-packed package, which upon closer inspection reads ‘Genuine Tank-Grown Goat’ with a smiling goat in the corner.

Tears prick in the corner of Alex’s eyes.

‘Oh.’

‘I just thought it would be nice,’ says Bobbie not looking up.

The wires spark and Alex smells the sharp scent of something burning. A high pitched warning siren wails as the sprinkler system activates dowsing them both in fire suppressant powder.

‘Fancy,’ says Bobbie shaking powder out of her hair.

‘Safety measures,’ says Alex. He can’t help wondering if this is a drug-induced dream.

‘By the way, your ass is showing,’ says Bobbie eyes still fixed on the wires.

‘Oh,’ says Alex. Now that she’s said it, he realizes that he is wearing some sort of open backed gown thing, not proper clothes at all. ‘I’m gonna go get dressed now.’

Bobbie nods with her fist without turning around.

‘Maybe take a shower,’ says Alex.

‘Dinner’s at six,’ she says. ‘Don’t fry your recon-patch and don’t be late.’

* * *

Showering takes way longer than Alex thought it would. His arm might have been reconstructed but it’s far from healed up to the way it was before. By the time he gets to the mess, everyone else is already there. The solar lamp has been replaced and the powder is gone. At one end of the table Naomi is teasing Holden about his persistent Earther accent in _lang-belta;_ at the other Amos and Bobbie are playing dice. In the middle of the table is a giant steaming pot of meat. The smell hits Alex hard, and for just a second he feels like he’s ten years old again, watching his Meemaw cook.

‘Look who it is,’ says Naomi.

‘Alex,’ says Holden. ‘Good to see you up.’

‘So did I dream the fire alarm?’ asks Alex. Naomi laughs.

‘No,’ says Bobbie. ‘Amos helped me fix the light though.’

‘We used _matna_ ’s trick and left the pot in the engine room for a while,’ says Naomi. ‘So it would get smoky.’

‘Can we eat now?’ asks Amos.

‘Alex first,’ says Holden.

‘How come you're not this nice to me when I get shot?’ asks Amos.

Everyone ignores him in favor of watching Alex serve up the meat. When everyone has a portion, Alex picks up his fork but Bobbie stops him before he can take a bite.

‘Don’t forget the sauce,’ she says pressing a small container with a spoon into his hands.

He smells it wonderingly.

‘Is this Q-Sauce?’

‘Holden made it,’ says Bobbie beaming.

‘Is it any good?’ asks Holden. He looks like a cadet on his first flight out of sim.

Alex spoons some sauce onto to the meat and takes a bite. It’s sharp with a little too much vinegar in the sauce and a little too much smoke in the meat. But beyond that, it feels like something he’s needed, something that’s been missing his whole life.

‘It’s perfect,’ he says.

‘Even though it’s too sour,’ mutters Bobbie.

Alex grins and takes another bite. ‘Tastes like home.’

**Author's Note:**

> Notes on Translations: I’m over here just low key inventing Belter words that I need so don’t mind that. 'Molas' means ‘sugar’ in any form (from molasses) and 'matma' means ‘nana’ (by way of the official 'matna' [mother] and 'ma' [mom]). 'Soyá' is official, meaning ‘yeah’ with regards to something obvious. 'Taki lik pasheng' is a combination of the official 'taki' meaning ‘thanks’ and '... lik pasheng' meaning ‘... as fuck’ to basically mean ‘thank fuck.’ The heart tapping gesture means ‘respect’ as per the show. Alex calls his grandmother, ‘Meemaw’ which is popular in Texas and the South (at least where my family’s lived) 
> 
> Notes on BBQ:  
> First note is that I’m vegetarian (lol) but I’m also the primary cook in my family so I have some experience with meat all the same. I’m also one of those people who’s like, ‘this story will collapse if I don’t know the exact spice mix used in Tennessee BBQ sauce,’ so make of that what you will. I tried to pick a variety of BBQ styles and sauces and here’s a list of origins/inspiration in order of appearance (in case anyone’s interested).  
> 1\. Alex’s ‘Q-Sauce’ is Texas style in keeping with what we know of the Mariner Valley region of Mars.  
> 2\. Bobbie’s is Memphis style  
> 3\. Holden is thinking of Kansas City style burnt ends  
> 4\. Amos brings back Middle-Eastern style kabobs with pomegranate molasses inspired sauce  
> 5\. Beru station has Alabama white sauce, most often served with chicken  
> 6\. Tycho station has barbecue with jerk rub, Jamaican style  
> 7\. Duga Eight is more Kansas style, with coffee, which is a common ‘fancy’ addition to many ‘standard’ recipes these days  
> 8\. On Kinsu, Amos gets bulgogi which is usually served with straight rice but I imagine that rice porridge might be a popular way to make rice last longer in the Belt  
> 9\. The BBQ of Alex’s childhood is a fusion of Texas styles, primarily ‘Cowboy’ style mixed with ‘Pit’ style. Goat is traditionally used in ‘Cowboy’ style and is also popular in Asia and the Middle East.


End file.
